Heavy Metal Ion Effluent Discharge Containment Using Magnesium Oxide (MgO) Nanoparticles

Abstract

In this study, the adsorption of copper (II) ions using nano-magnesium oxide was investigated. Mesoporous MgO nanoparticles were prepared by a relatively simple and economic combustion synthesis technique. The metal oxide nanoparticles were studied by powder X-ray Diffraction (XRD) for structural analysis, Field Emission Scanning Electronic Microscopy (FESEM) for surface morphology, Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) for elemental analysis and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy for chemical structure. The crystalline size obtained from Debye-Scherrer’s formula was in the range of 12–17 nm. The FESEM result revealed that the nano-MgO powder is porous in nature and highly agglomerated, whilst EDS confirmed the presence of elemental Mg and O in the highly fine white powder which was obtained after annealing the final precursor reaction mixture derived from magnesium nitrate and amino acetic acid at 500 °C for 2 hours. X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry (XRF) was utilized for analysing the adsorption properties of nano-MgO powder. It was observed that 0.20 grams of nano-MgO could remove 96% of heavy metal ions (Cu2+) from a standard (10 ppm) copper (II) chloride solution compared with commercial grade MgO which exhibits a removal capacity of 15%. This study has potential applications in the treatment of effluent containing copper ions at the level of discharge to the environment in industrial operations such as mining, chemical manufacture and electroplating.